


The Arms of a Thief

by upottery



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:41:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/upottery/pseuds/upottery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They hadn’t wanted to live forever, no, too miserable and split-lipped to think of settling down in a mansion with three hundred cars bought using laundered money.</p>
<p>A dirty criminals AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Arms of a Thief

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my friend [emily's](icarussian.tumblr.com) birthday. Happy birthday sweet angel, I love you!!

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. There had been far off glimpses of the end, long before, but it was never imagined this way. They hadn’t wanted to live forever, no, too miserable and split-lipped to think of settling down in a mansion with three hundred cars bought using laundered money, because their jeans were too stained to replace, and with everything else in life so pointless beyond the love of the run, they were fated to die with blood on their necks, and done so together. Always envisioned it ending with rough fingers gaining purchase on cheap tee shirts.

In that instance, they knew God had never been on their side. 

-

There’s really no bullshit when he looks at Roe the first time, their gazes don’t lock, Babe barely notices anything beyond the line of his jaw. He’s in prison, the tail end of a few years for the “petty” theft of some rich fuck’s flat screen and priceless wedding china that had broken in his car anyway. He’s rotating out of the visiting room and sees Roe sitting there, on the outside calmly talking to some tweaker. 

He thinks nothing of it until a few weeks later, and Roe’s being lead by a guard through the block, glasses folded in the neck of his sweater and a briefcase clutched in his right palm, looking like nothing that ever belonged in a prison. The image of his face now is kind of ironic for Babe, too soft for harsh cinderblocks, not weathered enough for being around convicts. 

He turns to his cellmate, a wiry guy with a smirk and a penchant for selling harder drugs, and muses outwardly, “Wonder who that guy is, seen him around a few times.”

Liebgott laughs, “It’s this new bullshit the state’s bringing down on us,” He wrings out his hands, knuckles cracking under the strain, “Spiers is pretty fuckin’ heated about anyone insisting he needs some cognitive healing.” He taps his fist against his skull, “Whaddya think, Babe? Can you be rehabilitated for society with some head shrinking?”

“I don’t know, Lieb, I’m still gonna wonder about all the TV’s I’m missin’. You?”

“It won’t stop my thoughts about some of Philly’s finest, that’s for damn sure.”

Babe and him get on well enough, for criminals, they move in different circles and circumvent any conflict with good-natured jokes. 

-

“Welsh!” Babe approaches the guard during rec time as he observes from the door.

“Hey, Heffron.” He nods towards Babe in acknowledgement, “What can I do for you?”

Babe chuckles, softly, “Got any word on how to get in with that new psychologist? I think his special brand of medicine could do me some good.” 

Harry raised one skeptical eyebrow, “Eugene Roe, you mean? I don’t know, Hef, your type is not really what he’s here for. “

“I get it, he’s here for the crazies, but what if all I needed to quit my life of crime was for someone to listen to what I have to say?” Babe purses his lips and smacks them once.

“I don’t believe you for a damn second, but I’ll try to be able to get you to see him, maybe.” 

“You’re the best, Harry,” Babe says as he jogs away, “You just reformed a criminal, you know.”

-

The first time Babe gets a good look at Roe, though, is a completely different story. It’s a thousand nerves firing and a million glances of them sizing each other up. Roe is a tired, tired man, with bruise colored bags under his eyes and a soft stare that beckons like a lighthouse, which Babe figures is typical, for a psychologist. 

They sit together, in a room, four walls seemingly buzzing with latent electricity and the potential energy of an explosive pair. Babe doesn’t know this at the time, but the walls were his first clue. 

He wonders idly what Roe thinks of him, a beaten kid with auburn hair and the world against him.

“Are you done?” Roe says, lips moving in some sort of crazy synchronized grace. 

“Done with what?”

“Trying to figure me out. I thought you knew it’s my job to do the opposite.” 

Babe leans back in his chair, “Course I know that, Doc. But I think you should know that before I started doin’ my dastardly deeds I used to be Front Street’s youth counselor. And that’s the truth.”

Roe closes his eyes and breathes out of his nose sharply, amused, most likely. Babe figures that coaxing a laugh out of this stiff is harder than he originally anticipated. Immediately, it’s a goal. 

He folds his arms on the table and rests his chin on then, smirking, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

-

Babe starts seeing him weekly, alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays. They talk about their lives, their families, and Babe had an inkling once that Roe was lying about it, like he figured prison psychologists would do, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever see a day when something disingenuous comes from Roe’s mouth. 

A Tuesday afternoon, Roe pins his butterfly’s wings. 

“What do you see me for, Edward?” 

“Do you want the truth?” Babe whispers like a secret, almost entirely kidding.

“Is the truth any different from what you tell me normally?”

“I figure that, once I bust outta here, I’ll get you to quit your day job and instead learn to steal and fuck me on a regular basis.” 

It’s another one of Babe’s efforts to make Eugene laugh, but it has a contradictory effect. His eyes widen marginally and his eyebrows raise, but he schools it all back relatively quick. 

Babe laughs loudly, forced from his throat in surprise. “Would you like that, Doc? Tell you what, I’ll get a place to stay in the city for a few weeks after I get out and wait for your call.” He scoots the chair back, shaking his head, and leaves Eugene Roe to curse himself alone.

-

Babe never dreamed he would feel cherry bombs beneath his tongue, but a kiss has lit the wick. 

Apparently a few more remarks and enough shortening sessions later, a locked room is plenty to warrant the heady press of mouths together, and a catch of teeth makes them retreat.

Roe moves like a fog and Babe like a rabbit. 

He has the audacity to chuckle, which has Roe frowning. “Is any of this funny to you?”

“Yeah, I never figured you for danger.”

“I work in a prison, Edward.”

“I like you, you know that, Gene. Call me Babe for God sakes.”

“Keep a door open for me.”

It sounds inconspicuous, but Babe is easy to catch on.

He rises from his seat, and shakes Roe’s hand, “I guess this is it, Doc. I couldn’t have made it without you and all that dumb shit.” 

The government didn’t catch on for a long time.

-

Babe gets out a month later, sun a bit brighter on the other side of the fence, ironically. He pulls out a cigarette from a pack of Eighty-Three’s, the shit he could never get before. It’s apart of the personal effects he put in two years ago, in a manila envelope along with a picture of his younger sister and the keys to his impounded and ratted-old Chevy. 

The car barely starts and it’s impossibly fond to hear her clutch struggle to catch on every gear. 

Babe isn’t too sad that no one was there to see him out. It’s his fourth sentence, anyway. 

He pulls into a motel only a few miles down the street, books a room for two weeks, and sits on the edge of the bed, pushing the heels of his hands above his cheekbones. He sees the stars behind his eyelids when he shuts them hard enough. Usually after he gets out he sleeps on his dad’s couch until he can find a job that never pays well. It always drives him to steal again.

Recently, it’s become more of a hobby than a need. He’s gotten away with more cons than he’d care to mention. 

-

Babe’s been sitting in the room for the past five days, hording the complementary breakfast spread and disillusioning himself into thinking that tomorrow Eugene Roe will knock on the door and accept his thinly veiled offer. 

The life of a criminal is awfully lonely, after all.

The arms of a thief are colder than most. 

A knock comes a few hours later, and Babe opens the door to see Roe, gentle eyes and pursed frown and all. 

-

The first time Babe sees Roe commit a crime is like the strongest hit of the toughest drug he’s ever had. It’s a shower of sparks and the fiery tongue of the devil at his throat. 

They run together, hands grasped and palms that kiss with every stride. It wasn’t much; they stole for food because Babe wanted to begin as not to scare Roe away. Roe is not scared, though, his face is steel and his pupils are focused. 

Streetlamps are not meant to make men look like messiahs. 

-

They collapse into Roe’s apartment, the space they’ve shared for a month. It’s only gotten dirty since Babe arrived, clothes and half empty glasses strew around. Roe tells him every day to clean up and he always replies, “Just wait till we’re on the run, none of this shit will matter.”

Babe’s laughing, his breath light. He leans on a wall and smiles at Roe from across the room. “You did it, Doc.” Babe closes his eyes and shakes his head, pushing his fingers against his temple, “You were beautiful out there, you know. I could see your face, I could see you liked it.”

“I did, Edward.” Roe walks towards him, long, long, strides of his legs, and with purpose. 

They stand and look at each other another couple of moments, and Babe blinks, slow. “We should do it again, sometime. You come ‘round here often?”

Babe hears a vague mutter that sounds like _you idiot_ before Roe cradles his face in his hands and presses their lips together. 

They kiss a lot, after that time during his last session, but this one feels different. Babe feels like his fingertips are magnets, influenced by his own personal field, Roe with a blush stained high on his cheeks and lips red as cherry stems is a force. 

Roe goes for Babe’s belt, and he chuckles as Roe tries to undo it blind. He pulls away, a smirk slanting his mouth, “Eugene, it definitely took you long enough to get to the fucking part of my proposal.”

“I’m not just a good time, Babe.” Roe’s arms have dropped to his sides.

“I know you aren’t, D-“ Babe grins at him, and puts his hands on Roe’s shoulders. He gently shakes him. “You called me Babe.”

Roe makes an assenting noise, “It’s probably because I’m angry.”

Babe brings his lips to Roe’s jaw and kisses all along it, under and above it. “You’re a real catch, Eugene.” He says, gentle. “I’m lucky to be your Clyde.”

Roe closes his eyes, brings his arms to wrap around Babe’s back again, “This doesn’t mean I’m your damn Bonnie.”

“You’re my somethin’, Doc.”

-

The first time they fuck, it’s rough and fast, half-hinged with adrenaline and an admiration for the stained bow of Roe’s lips. They’ve long since ditched his apartment, fooling together now on some motel bed. Roe made sure to tell Babe that this didn’t make him a cheap date.

Babe is too far dug in, like the press of his fingertips against Roe’s hipbones, and the sinking weight of a heart in love, he only nods in response, burying his hopes in the curve of Roe’s neck and breathing there until he has no air left. 

Babe wants their hips moving against one another for the rest of his forsaken life. 

There’s a hundred thousand dollar’s worth of jewelry in a bag in the top of the closet. 

Roe is the oxygen in a forest fire. Roe is the rain in a torrent.

Roe is the only proof that God exists.

-

Babe remembers the first time he saw death in Roe’s dark eyes. That was years ago. They held up a bank and Babe had to kill the security guard. Roe didn’t talk to him for weeks. It was the unhappiest Babe had ever been. 

They kissed for the last time this morning, Babe knows. 

There’s blood on their necks and bullets in their chests, a hundred yards and the final stand between them. Only their eyes reach each other at the end.


End file.
